Greyhound

A common enough name for a pub it is usually an indirect reference to the dog – indirect because a lot of the early ‘Greyhounds’ refer to mail coaches. Long before the days of the American Greyhound Line (established in 1914) horse-drawn mail coaches of that name plied between London and Birmingham, and, more locally, London and Exeter – there was another Greyhound pub at Millbay.

The ‘grey’ element, incidentally, does not refer to the colour, but rather another word, the meaning of which is unclear.

The pub stood what was Frankfort Street, between Cambridge Street and Willow Street, roughly where Littlewoods is today. It seems likely that prior to the 1850s and the arrival of the railway in Plymouth it was known as the Coach and Horses. It closed in the 1890s.